American Phoenix

by Jane Cook

  Peace thrilled her, while the idea of selling their furnishings and making travel arrangements troubled her. Though shocked, she responded with love.

  “I fear I shall be much imposed upon; this is a heavy trial but I must get through it at all risks,” she confessed, adding, “and if you receive me with the conviction that I have done my best I shall be amply rewarded.”

  Indeed. The woman who had bitterly left Boston because her husband and father-in-law thought they should leave their boys behind now ardently longed for her husband’s love and approval as she stepped forward and made the biggest journey of her life—solus.

  The trials Louisa faced on her travels from St. Petersburg toward Paris in 1815 were worse than she had imagined when she wrote that letter to John. Now nothing could lessen the reality of her circumstances as she entered the French border town of Strasbourg.

  She had one thing in common with Napoleon. Both were escaping their exile. Both would do anything for reunion.

  58

  Vive!

  “NAPOLEON HAD BEEN TAKEN,” LOUISA LEARNED FROM THE POST house master at her next stop. “He had been tried immediately and shot.”

  Before leaving the room, the innkeeper told her that the news of Bonaparte’s death was reliable for one surefire reason. The assurance came from the palace.

  “I heard an exclamation of horror; and turning round, saw the boy who I had hired, as pale as a ghost, and ready to faint—he looked piteously at me saying ‘O that great man! I did not expect that!’”

  Louisa was grateful that the innkeeper left the room before the boy’s outburst. Otherwise he might have concluded that she was “some violent Bonapartist” and harassed her, or worse. She left the post house as soon as the horses were rested.

  “Wagons of every description, full of soldiers, were continually rushing towards the frontier—roaring national songs, and apparently in great glee at the idea of a renewal of hostilities—What a mere animal man may become!”

  They reached the Fortress of Kiel, which was on the Rhine River opposite Strasbourg. The border guard demanded to see her papers and thoroughly questioned her. He subjected them to an intense interrogation by searching their bags, which delayed them. After realizing she was a diplomat’s wife, he agreed to let her cross into Strasbourg.

  “He [the officer] said the country was in a very unsettled state, and that it would require great prudence and caution, in the pursuit of my journey to Paris. . . . The emperor had certainly returned; and was then on his way to the capital.”

  Napoleon was not dead. The rumor of his being shot was contradicted by another story. When the king’s troops—the soldiers of the Fifth—arrived on the outskirts of a sizable town, the leader of the Fifth had confronted Napoleon’s men over Bonaparte’s demands for five thousand rations of bread, wine, and meat from the town.

  As the Fifth’s leader sent a guard toward the men, Napoleon himself had stepped forward, brazenly flipped opened his coat, and called out: “Soldiers of the Fifth, I am your emperor. Know me! If there is one among you who would kill his emperor, here I am.”

  None of the soldiers could fire. Instead they'd broken ranks and rushed toward him, crying out, “Vive l’Empereur!” while bowing and kissing his feet.

  Because so many similar rumors were whisking into towns faster than the wind, Louisa concluded that her situation was dangerous. Her fourteen-year-old servant’s impulsiveness confirmed her intuition. She needed additional help to safely reach Paris.

  “The public spirit in Paris now is confident and sanguine. It does not appear that Napoleon has advanced from Lyons. He is undoubtedly there, very weak; and formidable forces are marching from all quarters against him,” John wrote in his diary about the time Louisa entered Strasbourg.

  Adams had heard that Napoleon arrived at Gulf Juan in coastal Cannes the first day of March with a few hundred men and four cannon. What he did not yet know was that at Elba, Napoleon had ordered a vessel to be painted like a British warship. Boarding it with the ease of an innocent girl, he'd escaped exile without the slightest notice. Not even the Royal Navy patrolling Elba had detected his deceit. Napoleon had also lied to Elba’s military governor by telling him that Paris was in arms. He needed to go there and rescue his people.

  John’s information about Napoleon’s weakness was wrong. Bonaparte’s few hundred men had swelled to a few thousand. Far from being stalled in Lyons, they were marching toward Paris and expanding their numbers with each town that gave them rations and men.

  Adams’s ability to understand French and speak it fluently gave him many opportunities to “spy” on those around him, especially at the opera. He spent most of his evenings at the theater, where he captured news and gossip from unaware audience members sitting next to him. Many in Paris assumed that as an American, he probably could not speak French very well, if at all. This assumption gave him an advantage.

  A baron had recently proclaimed with soaring confidence that King Louis’s government was stable. The pillars at the Palais Royale, the handsome palace whose cafés were magnets for Parisians, boasted broadsides calling Frenchmen to arms against Bonaparte. According to the baron, the number of volunteers offering to march against Napoleon was so great that the government could not accept them all.

  “It is ascertained that a part of the troops, as well as of the highest officers, are faithful to the king, and Napoleon’s soldiers will probably desert him in the end. There is but one sentiment to be heard in Paris,” Adams recorded on March 15, 1815.

  The best evidence came from the music, which orchestra conductors infused with couplets saluting “the Bourbons.” The royal national air, “Henri Quatre,” was sung each night, to rapturous applause. Likewise the cries of “Vive le Roi!” were just as loud at the conclusion of these performances.

  In contrast John also noticed that not everyone was as confident in the king’s ability to prevent Napoleon from retaking the throne: “I saw in various parts of the city a great number of post-horses, apparently going to take travelers leaving Paris.”

  More than two centuries earlier Shakespeare had wrtitten, “From their ashes shall be reared, a Phoenix that shall make all France afeared.” Though he intended the phrase to apply to England’s Henry VI, the same could have been said of Bonaparte returning from exile.

  When John returned to his hotel the night of March 15, he discovered a letter from Louisa, which was dated March 5 in Berlin. She told him she thought she would be in Paris within ten to fifteen days. Ten had already passed, and she had not arrived. What could be delaying her?

  Louisa spent an entire day at Strasbourg to rest.

  “The day at Strasbourg was very tedious—My health was dreadful, and the excessive desire I had to terminate this long journey, absolutely made me sick—I had been a year absent from my husband, and five years and a half from my two sons; and the hope of soon again embracing them, gave me strength to sustain the fatigue and excitement to which I was necessarily exposed.”

  After dinner she took a leisurely stroll with Charles through the town; its quaint charm reminded her of Massachusetts. When she returned, the master of the hotel introduced her to Dupin. He was someone she could rely on for advice and assistance, especially on the best route to Paris.

  “We immediately entered into engagements; I requested him to see that the carriage was in order, and told him that on the next morning but one, I intended to depart for Paris, and to go on with as much rapidity as possible.”

  Dupin asked the teenage servant if he wanted to go home, but the lad insisted on finding his old master in Paris.

  “As he had rendered me good service, I could not refuse this; and a condition was made by Dupin, that he was not to talk at any of the houses where we might stay, and that he was either to be under my eye, or his, at all times—to which he readily agreed,” Louisa noted.

  They left Strasbourg the next day and persevered until one o’clock in the morning. Louisa would have continued, but her
drivers insisted that she stop at a nearby house in an isolated town.

  “We drove up to a miserable place in which we found a long room, with a pine table, several very surly looking men, and nothing but common benches to sit on—Here I was obliged to sit, while they procured us a little milk, the only thing we could get.”

  The men questioned Charles, who became quite frightened.

  “Dupin took the opportunity to ask if I could have some chamber where I could put the child to sleep, and a door was opened into an adjoining chamber even more uncomfortable than the one we left.”

  Once again Louisa and Madame Babet stayed up all night, both unable to sleep.

  “[We] heard threatening conversation in the next room, and the boasts of what Napoleon was to do now that he had arrived, to drive out Louis XVIII and his beggarly crew.”

  The men hated the Russians and loudly cursed them.

  “There were many bitter anathemas against the allied powers and the horrible Cossacks—I rejoiced when I found myself once more safely seated in the heavy Russian carriage, and we renewed our journey with fresh spirits.”

  Dupin was as judicious as he was discreet and tactful. His smooth manner of speaking commanded respect, even from the cursing men at the inn.

  They arrived at the town of Nancy, where they stopped only to change horses. Delighted at the return of the emperor, troops crowded the town square, where they were mustering and preparing to join Napoleon.

  “Dupin told me that if we made good speed, we should keep in advance all the way; as it would require some hours for their preparation, and that we should reach Paris with ease before they could get half way there.”

  They drove quickly, stopping at Chateau-Thierry for the night, without incident. The next morning Louisa and Dupin decided to aim for Epernay, where they could stop to eat. She relaxed. The roads were fair, and the weather was even better. Everything seemed quiet. They reached Epernay just as Dupin had predicted, in time for lunch.

  “The waiter said that I must have some champagne as this was the fine champagne country, and he doubted if I could find such in Paris. He was so urgent; I at last consented to have a bottle, which certainly was superior to any that I have ever tasted before or since.”

  The waiter served them so quickly that they were ready to depart in less than an hour. Then he gave them disturbing news. Yes, it was true. Napoleon was marching in the direction of Epernay. He told her not to worry. She was at least a day ahead of his reunited Imperial Guard, an elite force that sometimes personally guarded Napoleon.

  “[The waiter] told me that the people of the town did not expect the troops to pass until the next day, and that I need not hurry.”

  Meanwhile John again recorded his observations, this time about the king’s Tuileries Palace. “I went out half an hour before dinner and walked around by the Tuileries and the Place du Carrousel, where a great concourse of people was assembled,” John wrote. “The king was going out to review the troops, who are to march out tomorrow morning to meet Napoleon.”

  Adams wondered whether the army’s support for the king was a pretense, a mask of their true love for Napoleon: “No appearance of anything like defection to the royal cause was discernible, but the countenance of the attendants at the Tuileries marked dejection.”

  He heard a story that confirmed his suspicions. When a few garrison officers ordered the troops in Paris to cry out, “Vive le Roi!” the soldiers replied, “Oh, yes! Vive le Roi!”; then they chuckled as if hearing the latest joke from a court jester.

  Adams also noticed that the Palais Royal walls were covered with “the most violent and furious addresses and declamations against Bonaparte.” The calls for “Henri Quatre!” and the shouts of “Vive le Roi!” continued as “boisterous as ever” at the opera, but the military’s attitudes revealed an opposite sentiment.

  “They had not a hope that the soldiers would fight for the king.”

  The morning of March 20, John awoke to the news. The king and royal family were gone. The palace was as empty as Napoleon’s house in Elba. “They left the palace of the Tuileries at one o’clock this morning,” he documented. “It was but last Thursday that the king . . . talked with the two legislative chambers of dying in defense of the country.”

  Adams took to the streets to catch the vibe of the people, which had turned as quickly as a pigeon could fly from one steeple to another.

  “There was a great crowd of people upon the Boulevards, but the cries of ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ had already been substituted for those of ‘Vive le Roi!’”

  About the same time that loyalties in Paris switched, John received great news from home. An American newspaper reported that a battle had taken place in New Orleans. General Andrew Jackson had defeated the British army there on January 8, 1815—two weeks after John signed the Treaty of Ghent. The news was a double treat. After messengers delivered the Treaty of Ghent to Washington City in February 1815, Congress ratified and President Madison signed it. Peace was official. The War of 1812 was dead.

  John soon learned the details of King Louis’s proclamation, which he issued upon fleeing Paris. “He says that divine Providence, after restoring him to the throne of his ancestors, now permitted it to be shaken, by the defection of a part of the army who is sworn to defend it.”

  Adams took comfort in one fact. The king’s route was to the north toward Ghent, not to the east, the direction of Louisa’s approach. What he didn’t realize was that Napoleon’s trek toward Paris and his wife’s journey could easily intersect.

  “We had gone about a mile and a half, when we suddenly found ourselves in the midst of the Imperial Guards, who were on their way to meet the emperor,” Louisa wrote of the surprise she encountered after leaving Epernay. The waiter was wrong about her being ahead of the troops by at least a day. She was ahead by an hour at best.

  “The first notice I had of my danger was hearing the most horrid curses and dreadful language from a number of women, who appeared to be following the troops.”

  The banker in Frankfurt had warned her that stragglers could be worse than soldiers. His prediction was as accurate as the Baltimore sniper who took out General Ross.

  “Presently I heard these wretches cry out, ‘tear them out of the carriage; they are Russians’ and ‘take them out, kill them.’”

  Louisa looked at Charles and then Madame Babet, who was as pale as death and trembling uncontrollably. The carriage jolted forward and stopped violently.

  “At this moment a party of the soldiers seized hold of the horses, and turned their guns against the drivers.”

  The curses grew louder and more threatening with each passing minute.

  “I sat in agony of apprehension, but had presence of mind enough to take out my passports.”

  The guards questioned the drivers.

  “A general officer with his staff, consisting of four or five, immediately rode up to the carriage and addressed me—I presented my passports.”

  Madame Babet continued to tremble. Her memories of the French Revolution’s head-chopping atrocities drowned her senses, giving way to hysterics.

  In contrast Louisa calmly spoke in French to the officer. She explained her situation, identifying who she was and why she was traveling to Paris. He listened. She sat quietly while the officer studied her papers. Charles was absolutely petrified, sitting as still as a marble statue. They were so close to Paris—so close to being reunited with her husband—and now this.

  After all that she had been through, would she die at the hands of an out-of-control crowd, hungry for the return of a mad emperor? This was as dangerous as being thrust into the icy Vistula River. Then the worst of nature had teased them; now the nature of man threatened with a more demonic force. In spite of this, she also felt calm. An unexpected peace enveloped her.

  “God in his great mercy seemed to give me strength in this trying emergency; for excepting a heightened and glowing color in my cheeks, there was no evidence of fear or trep
idation: yet my heart might have been heard to beat, as its convulsive throbbings heaved against my side.”

  Employing her best French, she learned the officer’s name, General Michell.

  “[He] called out, that I was an American lady, going to meet her husband in Paris.”

  When the soldiers and crowd realized what he said, they suddenly changed their opinion of the travelers inside this Russian carriage. “At which the soldiers shouted ‘vive les Americains’—and desired that I should cry ‘vive Napoleon!’ which I did waving my handkerchief.”

  The men then repeated the “vive les Americains,” adding, “ils sont nos amis” or “they are our friends.”

  General Michell then ordered a number of soldiers to march in front of Louisa’s horses. She was not out of danger yet.

  “If we attempted to push on out of a walk, the order was to fire on us directly.”

  Next he advised Louisa on how to act.

  “He told me my situation was a very precarious one; the army was totally undisciplined; that they would not obey a single order; that I must appear perfectly easy, and unconcerned.”

  He then gave her a suggestion to help soften the pro-Napoleon mobs.

  “[W]henever they shouted, I must repeat the Viva’s.”

  Though she hardly loved the man, Louisa willingly agreed to wave her handkerchief and call out, “Long live Napoleon” to help Charles safely reach Paris.

  General Michell promised to use his influence to find shelter for her at the next post. He also advised her to delay her departure until all the troops had passed. She should then take a circuitous route to Paris. Agreeing, Louisa thanked him.

  “He complimented me on my manner of speaking French, and said that my perfect knowledge of the language would contribute much to my safety, as no one would believe me to be a foreigner.”

  With great relief Louisa began again but faced an uneasy situation. The officer and his men rode on each side of her carriage.